Last year, the Obama administration held a series of nationwide “listening sessions” to solicit public input on what should be included in any “essential health benefits package.” One attendee at the Denver meeting noted well-orchestrated pitches from special interest groups seeking coverage for services including foster care for autism patients, HIV testing, and medical nutrition therapy for African-American patients.

In Massachusetts, the current mandatory insurance benefits package includes chiropractor services and in vitro fertilization — services many ordinary people neither need nor want (but must pay for). In the proposed California essential benefits package, infertility treatments did not make the cut, but acupuncture did.

Under Obamacare 2.0, availability of health services will be increasingly driven by those with political “pull,” at the expense of those without.

3) The government will exert increasing control over how doctors can practice.

Under Obamacare, doctors will already be required to adhere to mandatory “quality measures” to be paid in full. The NEJM authors add a new twist, using the legal system to further control how physicians practice.

The NEJM article proposes a medical malpractice “safe harbor” where doctors “would be presumed to have no liability if they used qualified health-information-technology systems and adhered to evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.” In other words, if doctors follow government practice guidelines, they will be protected from malpractice lawsuits. But if doctors stray from those guidelines and anything goes wrong, they must take their chances in court. This will create tremendous pressure on physicians to practice government-approved “cookbook medicine.”

4) Controls breed controls.

Obamacare has explicitly encouraged hospitals and doctors to merge into large “Accountable Care Organizations.” Because these large entities face less competition in their local markets, health prices have naturally risen. In other words, Obamacare supporters are using these government-spawned monopolies to justify further government medical controls.

5) We need free-market reforms more than ever.

Instead of new government controls to “fix” problems caused by earlier controls, we need free-market health care reforms.

Note that pundits don’t debate whether to impose a national cap on private cellphone spending. That’s because our relatively free market has driven cellphone prices so low that even many of the poorest Americans can afford one.

The free market also works in health care. Consider “calcium scoring” heart scans, which measure how much calcium is deposited in the coronary arteries. Recent studies have shown these to be one of the safest and most reliable ways to measure one’s risk of future heart attack.

These calcium scoring scans do not require a doctor’s order and are not typically covered by insurance. Because patients generally pay out of pocket, motivated consumers shop around. Over time, normal market forces have dramatically driven down their price. Several years ago, they cost $500; now some centers offer them for under $100. This pattern of rising quality and falling prices can and should be the norm in all of health care.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Obamacare “individual mandate.” This meant the government could now dictate how Americans must spend their own health care dollars. The proposed cap on private medical spending would also prevent Americans from spending their health care dollars as they wished. Obamacare 2.0 would mean unprecedented government control over our health care — and our lives.

56 Comments, 26 Threads

1.
Thane36425

Obamacare was never actually about getting health care to everyone. It was all about power. It was a means to grab people around the throat at their most vulnerable and squeeze. The only way they could have more power would be to ration out food, which given how crops are going, increasing ethanol use, and Michelle’s love of telling people what to eat, they may yet happen.

The secondary point of Obamacare was to make friends and family rich. When that bill first came out, there were reviews listing how many companies and family members got contracts via Obamacare and how much. Plenty of those Congressmen and their families and friends came out millions ahead. Think Solyndra writ large but still in the shadows.

The right wing narrative of “Obamacare was never actually about getting health care to everyone. It was all about power” may help to reinforce all the things you think are bad about government, but the reality is *cost controls* are a fact of life right now if you have private insurance. We have death panels right now. They are called private insurance companies. They make decisions every day as to whether or not Mr. or Mrs. so and so is going to get a particular treatment. It doesn’t matter whether or not your health insurance is dispensed by the government or through a private entity (hint: it still will be under Obamacare) there will be cost controls.

For instance, I know of a very sweet elderly lady (73) who lives down the street from me. She is in end stage renal failure. She goes to dialysis several times a week and it is really taking a toll on her both mentally and physically. She desperately wishes for a transplant and talks about it all the time. However, in addition to her kidney problems she has, as one might expect for a 73 year old, other health issues, which make her unsuitable for a transplant. Her family tells her she’s on the list (she’s not) just so she doesn’t give up hope. This is all very sad. However, if you step back and look at the situation without the emotion you will see that there is no alternative here. Why would we take a risk and transplant a kidney into an old sickly patient, when the possibility of a better outcome exists with that kidney being transplanted into a younger, healthier patient? This is “cost control” in action.

The reality is 2/3 of our health care costs are from preventable illness. The U.S. is the fattest country on earth! We have the power to control costs right in our own hands by just making better choices. If we got a handle on preventable illness we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. The ACA puts a lot of emphasis on prevention. For instance, seniors are now getting an annual $0 co-pay Wellness exam. You would be surprised as to how many people who have insurance still don’t see the doctor once a year. This is how we will spot things early and prevent them from getting out of control both health and cost wise.

This is the first time I mostly agree with you. Is it rationing because of the cost of the transplant? No, it is rationing because of the limited availability of kidneys.

Yes, the problem is folks not taking care of themselves. Give it up for Michelle Obama. She knows it is about our diet and exercise. You KNOW she gets on Barry about his habits. He admits it.

But you make the case for it being about power. They react to this crisis by jamming through this massive power grab. They are not trying to fix the problem at all. Did they exclude the fatties from coverage? Wouldn’t that be an interesting law? If your BMI is over x, you are not eligible for any kind of coverage. Hit the gym, fatso!

Hopefully, when the “fatties” see the doctor once a year, the doctor will tell them that they are a fatty and maybe refer them to a nutritionist, or get their thyroid checked, etc., and find out what’s going on. If anything it will give them the motivation to change the habits that might lead to something way more expensive, such as a lifetime of diabetes. Who would want that?

It is frightening the readiness to run other people’s lives that is on display whenever healthcare cost comes up. It is why forced collectivization of the personel expenses of heathcare is ultimately destructive of the most personal liberties. If I neglect my blood pressure, overeat, enjoy tobacco, and only go to my doctor when I think I am sick and ignore my cholesterol numbers, it ought to be business of no one but myself and those who depend on me or love me. Anything that makes it someone else’s business is the enemy of freedom. Which is as much as to say the enemy of the human soul. What is frustrating is that the rationale is bogus anyway since those who take poor care of themselves cost others less by dying sooner rather than living to die later of something else anyway after years of drawing social security.

Gee lots of people do risky things, bungee jumping, having multiple sex partners, drink, drug, do excessive physical training, so which of those get’s the hectoring from you.

As for insurance companies, at least one can sue them, try that with the government. Another thing the author of the article didn’t mention but implied is that if a patients consumption can be capped so can the physician’s income. Great way to incentivize the best and the brightest to go in to medicine. 20 years from now if this disaster isn’t repealed medical tourism will be a thriving industry for those who can afford it.

Correct. The government is held harmless from any law suits. Its in the bill. So after the laptop tells a doctor what to do and the patient dies from incorrect care, the govt gets to say, oh well, t least we saved money!

Cynical wonder is a progressive through and through. He could care a less about any life other than his own and his immediate family. If it was up to him, he would start the mass depopulation process of all who disagree with the progressive idealolgy.

The fact is, he would love to see that 73 year old pass on and stop puutting off C02.

In your example, the cure is more dangerous than the disease. The risk of her dying under surgery is high, the risk of death from surgical complications is high and the probabilty of rejection is high.

Rejection from Medicare/aid is 2.5 times higher than private insurance. State insurance agencies and lawyers are standing by the side for any chance to jump on private insurance. The client has a recourse.

With Medicare/aid, there is no recourse for action: the decision has been made, including unplugging your infant or sending your semi-comatose parent home with you in your car with all tubes attached.

Your 2/3′s of all disease can be identified beforehand and is preventable is a hoax and lie. The falisy is that all early detection of disease leads to prevention which is hard to classify as prevention if the person already has breast cancer. A certain portion of the population will always be sick and dying. Not all cancers are from smoking, not all diabetics are fat, not all persons with high blood pressure are detected. All ‘intervention’ efforts in past did not lower the percentage of ill.

It’s all about control folks, akways has been, always will be. “I’ll tell you what to do because I’m bigger. Or I’ll tell you what to do because I have more guns. Or I’ll tell you what to do because I have the food”. The issue is doing the telling not what you use to be able to.

“The Three Stooges” mentioned above clearly inhabit an alternate universe in which the Soviet Union never existed. If they were living in our plane of reality, they’d have realized by now that 70+ years of central planning and price controls totally f***ed up the economy of that country, its medical system, and the people who lived in it.

The above idiots should be tied to chairs with Kindles in front of their faces and forced to read “The Gulag Archipelago” repeatedly until they come to their senses.

You can always recognize a “tolerant liberal ” as they have to use a disparaging description due to a lack of facts.
Than we move to the blame of all the worlds problems due to Capitist/Colonialist based societies.
Reference our Presidents constant comments:
“You didn’t build that”
Republicans drove the economy “into the ditch”
Using the word I 42 times in announcing Bin Ladens death

Simply put the left has no interest in prosperity (but their personal prosperity) they want equality…SEE KARL MARX…see Obamacare

But Soviet central planning worked out just fine for those at the top. As other have noted, it’s all about power. It doesn’t matter if life is miserable for the common folk, because those wielding control will be living well. And the worse things are for the peasants, the more valuable control becomes for those at the top.

these 3 stooges are Hollow liberals and the same ones sitting at the$150 MObamas botched abortion dinners..kill them it was the intent…heartless–get rid of the old, the fattys, the handicapp–Lennin, Stalin..its their liberal utopia–pure communists ..how did they creep into America? but they are here godless parasital tics..blood suckers. My grandchildren will have no freedoms, no lxuories or the dreams for freedom..its over when he gets a second term the Jarretts and Axelrods..all of them will shut down our electrial grid, coal mines,,the itnernet will be sparsed, no freedoms, we will be rationed for schools, apply to drive a car like they do in China–food is already being rationed..water, you’ll see communism is here..and these 3 are the leaders ..

So irritating. I didn’t use to be a big health care spender, but now I have to undergo IVF for every child I have, and that is very expensive. I am more than willing to pay for it out of pocket, though–it is a choice. And now it sounds like the Democrats want to tell me how much I can spend to have children?

Easy solution: ELIMINATE GOVERNMENT LICENSING. Tell my colleagues and their government minions to go to hell. This is where the progressive project started and the hundred years leading to hell won’t stop until this is taken care of.

That’s a lie. The 716 billion dollars do not in any way impact patient care. The reforms come on the administrative end. These reforms include waste and fraud, such as overpayments and over billing, which is rampant in the system. In fact, the reforms you refer to as “cuts” actually extended the solvency of the Medicare program by almost a decade. It closes the prescription drug donut hole, which saves seniors up to $6,500 annually. Also, seniors are now eligible for a $0 co-pay annual Wellness exam focused on preventive care. Only in teapublican land are reforms such as these viewed negatively.

By contrast, the Ryan Vouchercare proposal gives our seniors the equivalent of a “coupon” to go out into the private market and try to get coverage. What happens if your “coupon” doesn’t cover your care? Better have the number to the nearest morgue handy …

“The 716 billion dollars do not in any way impact patient care.” —
That’s a lie. Senior citizens are already, suddenly finding it much harder even to get a doctor to see them.

Dems have never been concerned about waste and fraud in government agencies (with the sole exception of defense). Dems have specialized in building and sustaining wasteful government agencies and protecting fraud (e.g. the enrichment of Fannie & Freddie execs, Solyndra, etc.). In the Dem world, as long as the money is going into the pockets of Dem voters and donors, it’s not a waste.

Ryan’s plan is NOT a “voucher” or “coupon” program. Ryan has given serious thought to how Medicare can be sustained for future generations. Obama and the Dems have done nothing but demagogue the issue.

Can you give an example of a senior that is finding it hard to find a doctor to see them and how their insurance policy is structured? I think I know what you might be referring to. First, let me tell you who you are not referring to: seniors who are not poor and have traditional Medicare generally purchase what is called a Medigap policy (because Medicare doesn’t cover 100%). This picks up the additional costs. These seniors have NO trouble seeing the physician of their choice.

The second group is a bit more problematic. Poorer seniors who qualify for Medicaid and also are eligible for Medicare are what are referred to as “dual eligibles.” Many states are pushing these dual eligibles into HMSo or PPOs. All a senior has to do is sign up for one and they will get to see the doctor they want. The patient satisfaction rate is very high with many of these plans. Moreover, that should be something you would support because it is more of a public/private partnership, rather than the traditional centrally administered Medicare.

The Ryan plan destroys Medicare as we know it. It DOES hand you the equivalent of a coupon. The reason it does is because if the value of your coupon does not cover what you need it to cover you can’t get another and are stuck with the difference, so you are factually challenged as to how the Ryan plan functions.

no that’s a lie what your saying. Already obamas are not paying for cardiologists (18 months for any specialists to get paid for services) could you wait 18 months?? Your the liar. And I know first nd that all prescriptions will be tripled for all obamacare patients! Plus if your a whitey youll never get any white kids into any medical colleges its in the power bill! So you think we’ll be getting top notched A plus physicans?? LOL I dont think so..
The 159 Obamacare new agencies will be huge power grab for demon rats! All specialist are being pushed out of the medical field right now! and medical devices are being taxed taxed taxed! That hip?? plezz too exspensive! He is destroying the best health care in the world and it will get worse this is the old t86 nazi plan-ask Orsaga–the NIH and DOJ are ran by his buddies–so YOU are the liar!

716 billion is an amazing amount of fraud if your statement is true. Indeed larger than the defense budget. Wellness care, what a joke. Yes a senior who already has chronic conditions is really going to helped by wellness care. As for over billing, thats a game the government has foisted on the providers. They have to ‘over bill’ to charge what they would have charged to begin with instead of settling the compensation offered which is a loser for the provider. Hospitals do so as well to cover over all the government required loses they have to eat. There will nowhere near that amount of savings based on you assertion. The savings will come from rationing by denial or long wait times.

Universal health care is the holy grail of The Tyrannical International Socialism a.k.a Communism. Universal Healthcare is The easiest and quickest way for the government to control the populace. Under the guise of companion and fairness It can decide who will live and who will die. Obama and his comrades can try as much as they want to sugar-cod IPAB. Death Panel is real. If anyone believes that the Democrat Party is democratic needs his/her head examined, they are nothing more than selfish dictators wannabees.

You reduce healthcare costs by reducing costs (i.e., controlling things that reduce costs, like doing tort reform and not keeping kids on parents’ policies ’til they’re 26, etc.) and not by saying “we’re only going to spend so much”… healthcare will just eat up that money and be lousy then.

“It is said the ancient Greeks used a simple method to stop the multiplication of ‘laws.’ Perhaps we should try it on our Congress. Anyone wishing to propose a new law had to do so while standing on a platform with a rope around his neck. If the law was passed, the rope was removed. If the law was voted down, the platform was removed.” — “John Galt,” Dreams Come Due: Government And Economics As If Freedom Mattered

The bait & switch, the scapegoats, the insane power grab — we’ve seen them all before. When Stalin nationalized or “collectivized” agriculture in the U.S.S.R., he had an emergency too — a “bread crisis”. (We supposedly have a crisis of the uninsured, or so Obama would have us believe.)

Stalin chose the “kulaks” as his scapegoat, in whose name society had to be turned upside-down. Obama selected doctors and insurance companies as his scapegoat or excuse for seizing total control of the medical industry.

And in both cases, Stalin’s and Obama’s, the real aim was not to solve a problem, but to seize control of a major segment of society. Of course, after Stalin seized the farming sector, the U.S.S.R. was never self-sufficient in food again. They were always coming to the U.S. for assorted “grain deals.”

And Obama will screw up American medical care just as thoroughly. But as other commenters have noted, his objective was to assert absolute power over society — not to solve a problem.

I would love to hear the main Obamacare defender debating these five points with Paul Hsieh, with both being allowed time to substantiate their arguments. I am sure Paul would be eager but I will not hold my breath for a Democrat opponent to meet this challenge.

Have you (or Dr. Wolf) tried to get your opinions published in NEJM or JAMA? Right now you’re preaching to the choir, but if you could get published in a Top Journal you would reach a whole new audience and provide a much needed alternative to the Control generally advocated in academic medicine.

“Conservatives can puncture these arguments all we like, but we can’t cut through the media filter.”

Yet if Obama is in the driver’s seat as our fiscal woes mount, he will use the crisis to further his restructuring. California is our advance guard — our Greece — yet their budget crisis is two months away from prompting one of the boldest redistributionist transformations this country has seen in years (even if barely anyone knows it yet).

Oh, and just as an aside, Larry Grathwohl’s eyewitness testimony confirms that Ayers and Dohrn have planned on and anticipated the need to kill fully 10%-15% of the population as “unreformable, die-hard capitalists.” In the early 1980s when the interview was recorded, the population of the U.S. was 250 million, thus Grathwohl’s number of 25 million that Ayers and Dohrn were planning on killing. Today, that number would be 30-45 million Americans that will need to be “eliminated” in order to quash the “counter-revolution.”

By doing through “attrition”…or denying health care to the staunchest free market warriors, usually the older, rural, ex-urban, “heartlanders”…it can be denied and made invisible.

“Global spending limits” on healthcare, energy production, the gutting of our military in half, the global warming fraud, the throwing open of our borders, the assault on Judeo-Christian organized religion, the jackpotting of Israel and Jerusalem, the advancement of China and Russia as hyperpowers, the seizure of whole industries, the strangling of the recovery, the inattention to job recovery, the devaluation of property, the seizure of inheritance, …all boil the frog one degree at a time.

And, we REFUSE to call this small c communism. There are no marching jackboots, so the sand in our eyes is nice and crusty.

To say it out loud SOUNDS like a conspiracy theorist. What else would someone alert to a conspiracy sound like?

Especially if the institutionalized co-conspirators in the media, academia and Hollywood immediately resort to scorn and derision?

The low information American will scoff because he will be bombarded with scoffing by the treasonous media. Romney and Ryan are between a rock and a hard place. They quite possibly can’t afford the derision.

And, we can’t afford to allow the overthrow. We can’t risk sounding crazy and delusional. We are painted into a corner. As long as we leave the masks on the traitors, they will continue to come across as reasonable. There is almost no time left to wake up America.

If these proposals come to pass, it just means that you will be going overseas for treatments you can’t get in the U.S. You have a problem, you use a U.S. doctor to make yourself ambulatory (if this is an issue), then travel internationally to get the real treatment, which would be cheaper than the U.S. treatmemt (if it were to be allowed).

Also, more people will start to do DIY medicine, which is the companion to DIY biotechnology. Some of us are already doing this (although not talking about it publicly).

We already know this. Everyone knows this. This is the reason the Tea Party elected 70 Senators and Representative. This is a reason Republicans captured half the State legislatures and Governors.

And I have not yet heard a single Conservative pundit or writer, or announcer, who starts out stressing that Mitt Romney said his first order of business is to repeal it.

A question for Conservative writers – when do we get beyond your warnings and stressing we have a candidate that will take the only path that will solve this problem – repeal it?

If it because you want a different solution? There is none. The solution to these underlying problems is political war – a destruction of the power of liberal elites. In government and politics the destruction of liberal power equals denial of access of liberals to government.

There are good Conservatives who argue that the left is embedded in our culture and it will be with us for a long time. But when the American Right went after the left via HUAC and McCarthy and others, the Conservatives (i.e William Buckley) sided with the Liberals in seeing such actions as a violation of rights embedded in our Constitution.

That may be, but you cannot argue the left is embedded in our culture and be part of the group that fought against the fight against the left.

And we wouldn’t have leftist commenters here essentially ignoring the facts presented in this article and claiming that Republicans want to hurt old people while Dems are being compassionate by raiding an already unsustainable Medicare fund in order to create another government-funded program that cannot be sustained either, except by lowering the quality of care for everyone except the politicians who imposed the program on us.

Facts on the ground show that the availability of medical care has already been constricted as a result of Obamacare, that a doctor shortage is being exacerbated, and that costs are rising faster for most people. These facts will all be denied by the True Believers — those who think it’s a good idea to force some people to subsidize other people’s contraception — and the Dems will claim that the worsening conditions only prove that they need to apply more of the same.

It should be done by party affiliation. Democrats should get the full treatment of Obamacare. They should sign up for it, pay for it, and be subject to its rationing. They would be taxed for it on top of all other taxes and be rationed care based on that revenue. Granted this would be a complex way of handling it and the bureaucracy would no doubt eat up a lot of the funds, but hey, that’s what they wanted to inflict on the country in the first place.

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I’m 62
Worked since age 12…first job on a garbage truck.
Worked for free one summer to learn small engine repair.
Put 2 kids thru school….both working.
Paid for house.
No debt.
I just paid my slave (property) taxes.
Repeat after me. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
The first govt lackey that messes in my healthcare will need a doctor to repair his eye socket.
At the first debate, Romney should walk over to Obarry to shake hands, then slap him in the mouth…saying “Not in my country”.
This sham of a “Government” must be ended.
Repeat..anywhere you can; I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
Buy guns, food and ammo. Post election could be ugly.
III%

I don’t know about you but where I live the property tax does no such thing. You get billed for water and sewage separately along with a separate bill for storm water drainage. Water mains need to be refurbished? That gets billed in to the water bill as a line item.

A global cap is the means for rationing. It is a vicious and arbitrary blunt instrument, but it confers immense power to those who wield it. It is administered at the point of a gun. Costs must be controlled, so our choices are rather unpleasant: Caps and rationing with top-down bureaucracy doling out favors to friends and clients of the ruling Party; or, radically exposing health care consumers to the costs of the care they use. Until a patient balances their health care expenditures against the cost of the very food on their table the extreme costs of health care in the US will not be brought to heel. So, which is worse: the Left would solve it by saying to you “You can’t have that;” while the conservative solution would result in citizens looking into their wallets and saying to themselves “We can’t afford that?” Do you want overseers disguised as Santa Claus, or a place where citizens participating in a market can make decisions for themselves based on personal needs and resources? Santa Claus has an agenda. He’s greedy, and he wants your soul. The market merely reflects harsh, unpleasant realities. Santa Claus is much easier to sell.

For the 1st 4 years after retirement I was not eligible for medicare. I paid my
doctors fees and paid for all testing like mri’s etc out of my own pocket. I found out that it was possible to negotiate payments for major stuff.
What I quickly discovered is that I got one heck of a discount for paying cash,
making it affordable for me..

You’re not eligible for Medicare until you are 65 (been that way since Medicare was created in 1965), that means you retired early at 62. That was your choice.

You can still continue to choose to pay in cash, of course. However, the fact that you retired at 62 leads me to believe that you are not someone who is, let’s say, of Mitt Romney’s income level. You took the loot as soon as you could. So, what happens if you need a heart bypass (you could very well be very healthy, I’m just giving an example) are you going to pay cash? Maybe you could make up the difference with the coupon Paul Ryan wants to give you?

You missed nancyg’s obvious point: that funneling costs through a bureaucracy (insurance or government) inevitably makes those costs higher.

Dems are demanding that the most basic, routine, predictable expenses be “covered” by health “insurance” — i.e., they hope other people will end up subsidizing their own expenses, while ignoring the fact that they are making those expenses higher. And if my routine, predictable expenses are already “covered” by the much more expensive “insurance” policy that the government has forced on me, then my choice to pay cash has effectively been taken away unless I want to pay double.

If you think the Dems’ plan is NOT about tightening control over individual choices and that it will not ratchet down the quality of care, you are hopeless blind to facts.

It’s Democrats who are denying me the option of having an insurance plan that covers only the unforeseeable expenses that I could not possibly afford. My insurance is more expensive than it needs to be because Democrats (and various lobbying groups) have required my “insurance” to include routine costs, and coverage for conditions that I am certain never to have.

For a thorough discussion of how and why all of this will happen, read Dr. Richard Fogoros’s book “Open Wide and Say ‘Moo’” available at Amazon or go to Dr. Rich’s site at covertrationingblog.com where the book is also available for free. He explains the goals and consequences of Obamacare better than anyone else I have read. The future for healthcare, providers and patients is very grim. One of the things that will happen is Americans will no longer be allowed to spend their own money for healthcare they may want that insurance will not cover. Any freedom of choice in healthcare will become illegal.

The main problem is that most doctors are making TONS of money right now, and none of them are going to want free-market reforms. Obamacare might slightly reduce doctor take-home pay, but not nearly as much as instituting a free market in medicine would. No matter how much they might complain, the fact is that doctors LOVE the current system because it is making them OBSCENELY wealthy!

Do you really think doctors want to have to worry about being competitive? Hell no! They just want guaranteed easy money, which is what they are getting now with the government/insurance paradigm. And chances are that if we instituted free-market medicine, doctors would just engage in price-fixing and other collusive behavior. They are motivated by money, not improving the lives of their patients.

Why should doctors want to “lower health-care spending”? They want health-care spending as high as possible, because that means they just take home more money!

Wake up, people. Free-market medicine is a pipe dream. The doctors will never allow it. They’re fat and happy right now as it is.